One of the points mentioned often by @sama is that founders give up too quickly. What advice did you get from your YC Partner on this conundrum of being cockroaches versus shutting down?
Inspired by Peter Norvig's 'How to write a Lisp Interpreter in Python', I created three variants of it along the same lines as the OP. The first is a Simple Lisp Interpreter in Javascript [1]. The second separates Syntactic Analysis from Execution [2]. And the third supports non deterministic computing [3].
'Reliving experiences' is part of the Exposure Therapy that is used to treat PTSD. I remember watching on NOVA or some science program how virtual reality was being used to treat veterans suffering from PTSD. By reliving a dangerous situation in the VR world, they are able to 'recompile' the program in a safer context than it actually happened.
Completely agree. Remember, PG and team wrote Viaweb in Lisp because that is what they were comfortable with. They got acruired by Yahoo because they had the users and the best product in the market. The fact that it was built in Lisp did not deter Yahoo at all.
Stackoverflow is built on .Net and nobody is questioning that now.
It could turn out to be an advantage that the others keep writing you off as 'destined to doom' because you are on the .Net platform.
1.Find the most accomplished professors in your department and take courses offered by them. Even though your school may not have a big reputation, some professors may have enough clout to recommend you when applying to Google/FB etc.
2.Keep doing Deliberate Practice. Take the hardest courses. Work on your own projects. Contribute to open source projects.
I don't agree that the banks should have been allowed to fail in the heat of the crisis. That would have meant that our access to cash would have stopped.
I certainly get the point that, now that things are stable, the governement needs to haul all these failed bank leaders into a room and make them pay back the bonuses earned leading up to the crisis.
Try looking up the corresponding topics in Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig.
I found reading the two books in parallel very helpful. When I read the SVM chapter in both books in parallel, the whole picture just came together for me. The theory and the implementation side-by-side.
I ususally find myself working in bursts. I have been on the knowledge gathering burst for the past few months. I went all crazy, bought books, read through most of them. Read HN posts etc.
But now I am kind of getting sick of it. I am now at a stage where I don't want to be on HN. And I am shifting into application mode. Now I will be focusing on applying what I have been gaining. Once I get sick of it, I will switch back to gaining mode.
So I would suggest, if you know that you also have a similar pattern (of working in bursts) then just do it until you get sick of it and then shift to application mode.
Thanks a lot for sharing those. I have found myself in the same position recently. And in order to overcome boredom, I started looking for broken things to fix in the area that I work in. I have been able to find a manual data entry process that goes into our Finance database. Talk about obvious!
I put a proposal together to the management with the $$$ impact ( and it comes to a million dollars!).
The amount just broke down all barriers for me. Nobody questions why I am doing this now. I have full liberty on how to execute this. I even got another developer dedicated to work on the project with me.
This is going to be completed for testing in another 3 weeks. We will see how this turns out.
I totally agree with edw519's suggestions and examples.
Your initiative will be rewarded.
This is already happening. Some bloggers like ryanwaggoner are openly asking for upvotes by submissions at the end of the blog posts.
So, unfortunately, this is something that will always remain broken.